No surprise, but Sports Illustrated is my bible right now in terms of shooting swimwear. These two photos are definitely inspired by SI. Beyond the obvious, I love SI for how you know there’s an adventure behind every one of their swimwear photos. That’s something that makes swimwear so unique. It’s something you wear while on vacation or holiday or weekend while out having fun near water so there’s almost always an adventure involved.

That’s why I think it’s imperative to shoot swimwear on location– a pool or beach or lake or stream– to capture the adventure associated with swimwear. Studio swimwear photos just don’t do that.

Model Cara, hair/mua Jessica Belknap, photography assistant Thomas Lindsay

Pete Springer Photography, Portland, Oregon

Couple of recent model headshots/beauty photos. I was trying out a technique new to me– mixing ambient window light with a strobe modified by a beauty dish. I really like the softness of the light produced with this technique and will definitely experiment more with it in the future. After all– photography is all about the light!

Model Venus, hair/mua Carlie Jean Cantrell, photographer assistant Thomas Lindsay

Pete Springer Photography, Portland, Oregon

So I know HD DSLR cinema style video is all the rage right now.

But I think the ability of shooting stills in portrait format holds a cool advantage over HD video. And yeah, I realize the irony of a post like this on a blog set-up to display landscape format pics (hence the big white space until I get around to coding the text into that space — ain’t gonna happen tonight though).

Here’s the deal. Movie/video/cinema cameras shoot landscape (horizontal) format. That’s because t.v. and movie screens are set up to display horizontal images. With still photos, there’s the option of creating both portrait (vertical) format or landscape format.

Magazine covers and posters use portrait format. It enables the capture of an entirely different composition and image than shooting in landscape format.

Why does this matter? Because the orientation of a photo affects the viewer perception of that photo. It affects how your eyes scan the photo. In a way, portrait format puts blinders on a viewer and forces them to concentrate on the subject.

Ironically, the replacement of print magazines– ipad etc– has the ability to display landscape or portrait format easily.

I suppose the day will come when all cameras are so high res you can crop anything to a portrait format, but it’s still better (for now) to shoot it right in camera. Well at least until we can all afford 100 MP Hasselblad digital backs!

What’s my point? It’s best for now to vary between landscape and portrait as you shoot but try to understand why you chose one or the other. Do you want to show the surroundings? Do you need a wide shot or one that shows off the top of a swimsuit (like the above image)? I could have shot it landscape but there was a basalt black rock jetty over her left shoulder that I didn’t want attracting the viewer’s eye. Think about things like that as you shoot and decide how to hold your camera. It will dramatically improve your photos!

Photo credits: Ari on the Oregon coast modeling a Moontess swimsuit, photo assistant Thomas Lindsay

Pete Springer Photography Portland Oregon

Pete Springer Photographer, Portland, Oregon

Four lights here, two on the background, one as key, one as kicker. A fairly simple set-up that works well for catalog, web, and retail photography.

Lingerie Moontess by Mihaela Munteanu, model Adriana, hair/mua Jessica Belknap, assistant Yasmin Khajavi

Pete Springer Photographer, Portland, Oregon

Tested out the new CS5 content aware tonight on these images from a shoot five years ago. Content aware is still basically a way to replace portions of an image seamlessly– similar to the pattern tool but with slightly different application and use.

I used it here to create a more square shaped image of each individual shot by creating a bigger canvas, then selecting that and letting content aware fill in the blank canvas space. It took a few tries and lots of cloning/pattern tool to clean it up, but it was a lot faster than just the clone/pattern tool. I bet this is one of those tools that will improve dramatically with time in Photoshop.

Oh– and there was a purpose to this test. My website portfolio uses a more square aspect ratio for portrait oriented shots than my camera shoots. Rather than crop it square and lose the top and bottom parts of the images, I added “content” to the sides. Like I said– a useful tool. In theory, you could quickly turn a vertical shot into a quite realistic landscape oriented shot.

Model Tiffany, shot in the desert outside Vegas in 2005.

Pete Springer Photographer, Portland, Oregon

Updated my swimwear photography portfolio tonight. Still plan to add and perhaps take away some photos for a better visual flow but I’m happy with how it’s looking for now.

Say– what’s that pdf on the right? It’s an awesome 36-page piece called Photoshelter Photography Blog Handbook. It’s free! (the image posted is a screengrab of my two monitors– I’m reading the handbook during file uploads, processing, etc)

The handbook also has links to awesome examples of photo blogs out there… oh boy, when this blog grows up it’s going to be one of them! But in the meantime check out that handbook. It’s really great and I’m already using several tips from it in this post alone!

Pete Springer Photographer, Portland, Oregon

Had a friend inquire about shooting some passport photos this weekend and did a little research. I discovered 123PassportPhoto online. It’s a free service that makes it really simple to create six duplicate government regulation passport photos ready for printing.

Of course, you still have to have a decent photo to begin with (lighting here is a beauty dish for key, reflector for fill, and two softboxes on the background). Anyway, thought I’d pass the link on and also offer up $10 passport photos– printed and ready for a passport application– to friends and family.

Yeah, you could go to Kinkos and pay $13 for only two photos lit with harsh on-camera flash. But for less money, you’ll get six photos that not look better (when was the last time you saw a beauty dish in a kinkos?), but cost less. Email me for details.

Pete Springer Photography, Portland, Oregon

Did a little meter test today that I’m sharing because other photographers might find it useful. I compared a Paul C Buff (PCP) Zeus head connected to a Z2500 powerpack, a White Lighting (WL) 1600 monohead, and a PCB ringflash connected to the Z2500 powerpack. All have halogen modeling lamps that were turned to full power.

I metered everything at ISO 100, 1/50th second, five feet from the lights. Here’s what I found:

 
Still not very powerful compared to “real” hot light. But interesting to note there’s almost a full f-stop difference between the WL and the ringflash. The ringflash with the diffuser seems to provide a broader and more diffused light than the bare reflectors though. I’m hoping to experiment more weekend and will share results when I have ‘em.

Pete Springer Photography, Portland, Oregon